[How shall we set priorities among experimental treatment methods?].
There is an increasing demand from patients to have access to new and promising treatment for severe diseases. Norway has recently started ordinary public funding of large-scale clinical investigation of treatment effect and safety for new treatment modalities. The government has thus established a new principle for funding a sub-category of clinical research: investigational medicine. How should we prioritize between promising clinical protocols when resources are scarce? The article examines criteria for priority setting in investigational medicine: quality of evidence; magnitude of expected benefit from treatment; balance between risks and benefits; quality of the research protocol; cost; and size of patient population. These criteria are applied on a controversial clinical examples, high-dose chemotherapy with hematopoietic stem cell support for metastatic breast cancer.
Norheim
O F
OF
Cand Med, Senter for medisinsk etikk, Oslo.
Ekeberg
O
O
Evensen
S A
SA
Halvorsen
M
M
Kvernebo
K
K
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000191:economics / Q000627:therapeutic use; D002985:Clinical Protocols; D003363:Cost Control; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D005380:Financing, Government; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000191:economics; D009664:Norway; D012106:Research / Q000191:economics; D012307:Risk Factors
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents
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